Nebraska OKs Pipeline; Now It's Climate Myth Vs. Jobs

Energy: With a clean bill of health from the Cornhusker State's governor, only the president's green base and the State Department's shared belief in nonexistent climate change stands in the way of jobs and growth.

As we noted earlier, Nebraska's Department of Environmental Quality recently gave the revised Keystone XL pipeline route from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, through that state a thumbs up.

Not surprisingly, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has approved the revised Keystone XL pipeline proposal through his state, seemingly removing the last excuse for the Obama administration to delay the economy-boosting pipeline.

Yet even before the ink was dry on Heineman's announcement, the State Department said that while Keystone XL had received environmental and political approval from the key state on its route, it would have to think about it. The State Department's approval is needed, since the pipeline crosses an international border.

"We don't anticipate being able to conclude our own review before the end of the first quarter of this year," said Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman at the State Department, which had previously approved the pipeline project after an extensive three-year review.

As the Heritage Foundation reports, that review "concluded that the pipeline poses minimal environmental risk to soil, wetlands, water resources, vegetation, fish, and wildlife, and creates few greenhouse-gas emissions. Keystone XL also met 57 specific pipeline safety standard requirements created by the State Department and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration."

We anticipate the new review will be a thumbs down since, in the minds of environmentalists, approval would contradict President Obama's commitment to fight the climate change boogeyman in his second term.

President Obama pledged in his inaugural address Monday to respond to the threat of climate change, saying the "failure to do so would betray our children and future generations."

The pipeline having been found safe, environmentalists are focusing on emissions generated by the extraction of crude from Alberta's oil sands, even though climate change has been exposed as a deliberate fraud and any emissions would have no effect when compared with China's emission-belching coal plants which cloud the skies of Beijing and other Chinese cities.

"Starting with rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, the president must make fighting global warming a central priority," Margie Alt, executive director of Environment America, insisted on Monday, ignoring the fact that there are 50,000 existing miles of safely operating pipeline already crisscrossing the U.S., including Nebraska and the Ogallala Aquifer.

See Also

Politics: The White House has denounced an anti-abortion group's videos of Planned Parenthood's activities as "fraudulent" and circled its wagons to defend the indefensible. What kind of White House is this?For an institution that might argue that it doesn't have a dog in this fight, the White ...

Iran Deal: After initially refusing, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency will brief senators Wednesday. Are its nuclear monitoring practices kept secret because they're inadequate?Yukiya Amano, the director general of the IAEA, until Friday was refusing to brief senators on ...

Corruption: The third installment of released emails fell hard Friday on the Hillary Clinton campaign. If her candidacy lasts until the end of the summer, there's much more wrong with this country than we thought.Friday had to be an extraordinarily trying day for the Democratic front-runner. On the ...

Regulation: As businesses struggle to stay open and lay off workers, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing one of the biggest hiring binges in America outside of Google. Good news? Hardly.Barack Obama's EPA has announced it will try to hire 800 new regulators over the next several ...

Taxes Vs. Prosperity: The Real Wedge Issue Ronald Reagan died 11 years ago, and his presidency ended a quarter century ago. But my, how his tax-cutting ideas live on. The living legacy of Reaganomics, or supply-side economics, is that tax rates keep falling all over the world. Imitation really is ...

About Investor's Business Daily

Investor’s Business Daily provides exclusive stock lists, investing data, stock market research, education and the latest financial and business news to help investors make more money in the stock market. All of IBD’s products and features are based on the CAN SLIM® Investing System developed by IBD’s Founder William J. O’Neil, who identified the seven common characteristics that winning stocks display before making huge price gains. Each letter of CAN SLIM represents one of those traits.

Select market data is provided by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services. Price and Volume data is delayed 20 minutes unless otherwise noted, is believed accurate but is not warranted or guaranteed by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services and is subject to Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services terms. All times are Eastern United States. *Reflects real-time index prices.